• In Kentucky, a bill filed in the current legislative session would require all school resource officers to carry firearms. The proposal, Senate Bill 8, amends Senate Bill 1 which did not specify whether or not resource officers had to be armed.
• In Massachusetts, the Norfolk District Attorney’s office is implementing a canine component to the safe school’s programs. Community Resource Dogs, in the form of puppies, are being deployed with school resource officers as they work with children in crisis.
• In New York, the Warren County Sheriff is contemplating changes to the school resource officer program that he now considers to be “unsustainable.” The program uses recently retired police officers to serve in schools, but these officers want neither full-time work, nor after-school events work.
• In Indiana, South Bend schools’ suspension and expulsion rates for all students, including the disproportionate rates for black students, have continued to increase. Next door, neighboring districts School City of Mishawaka and Penn-Harris-Madison have seen the opposite happen. Officials in South Bend are examining how best to support restorative justice school discipline policies to change the upward trend.